What Climate Change will Bring to Us?

According to meteorologists’ data, each of the past 2016 months has made its own temperature record. Such situation concerns academics and representatives of environmental public organizations who believe that climate changes not only provoke cataclysms but also are a fraught with hazardous incidents caused by permafrost thawing.

Plans for the Paris Climate Agreement implementation remain the subject of controversies in the Russian business community. One part of entrepreneurs sees the low-carbon plans as a threat to the economy. Businessmen who don’t share this position, experts, and NGO representatives find such opinion quite archaic and put forward proposals for the Strategy of low-carbon development.

April 26 marked 30 years since the Chernobyl NPS nuclear disaster. The events which had taken place in spring 1986 are listed in the world history as a major nuclear catastrophe. Despite the fact that the world community has acknowledged the dangers of nuclear energy, attempts to include NPSs in the list of possible ways for greenhouse gas emission reduction never stop. The nuclear power generation industry cannot help solving the problem: it only creates new ones, experts and representatives of public environmental organizations are sure.

Along with over 170 other countries, Russia signed the Paris Agreement – the new international climate agreement due to replace the Kyoto protocol – at a ceremony held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. This day will be remembered for the highest number of countries that signed an international agreement on day one.

In the course of the World Economic Forum in the end of January in Davos, establishment of the Global Commission on Business and Sustainable Development was announced. Companies which join the global events on the planet’s natural resources protection climate problems solving might get huge benefits and protect their long-term result rating, economists say. Climate-related business initiatives started to appear in Russia.

In the present year, carbon intensity of the internal regional product (IRP) should turn into one of the indexes of regional authority’s efficiency. Representatives of public environmental organizations welcome implementation of the data reporting on greenhouse gas emissions; however, they believe that the effectiveness would go higher if regions acquire financial incentives for realization of their plans besides the only moral support.

During the climate conference in Paris, several influential financial organizations, along with heads of states and corporate CEOs made a public statement to support putting a price tag on carbon. However, the international community has mixed feelings about carbon trade.

In 2014 and 2015, the all-Russia public organization “Social Ecological Union” (RSEU) has carried out surveys in Russian regions on the results of implementation of the RF Climate Doctrine. Letters with requests for providing information had been sent to all regions of Russia.

The different scales of regional climate change in temperate latitudes of the Asia-Pacific region marked change in climatic conditions at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries in half a century time scales of 50-60 years, as well as inter-annual and multi-year fluctuations that depend on the phase of half a century of hesitation and under certain conditions can lead to an increase in the frequency of extreme climatic events.

Strategies of response action to climate change on different levels (federal, regional and municipal) will allow us to lower the risk of damage from negative effects of climate change. This is the conclusion made by the authors of the recently published Second Assessment Report on climate change and its effects on the territory of Russian Federation, by RosHydromet. Environmental NGOs make it clear that adaptation and mitigation measures must become an inevitable part of Russia’s national and regional policies.